EDGARTOWN — "Jaws," the movie that invented the summer blockbuster, is mostly a movie about men.

The three leads are male. The men of the town debate the proper course of action when a giant shark starts eating people, and the majority of the shark's victims are men. Even the shark itself is referred to as "he."

But on Saturday, at JawsFest: The Tribute on Martha's Vineyard, it was the women's turn to share their stories about the making of the iconic film.

At the final of seven "Living Jaws" sessions, Susan Backlinie, Lee Fierro, Susan Murphy, Edith Blake and Carla Ramp — a surprise addition to the panel — shared their stories and took questions from the audience. The "Women of Jaws" event drew nearly 100 fans to the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown.

The moderator of the panel, Yana Pisano, a "fin-addict" of "Jaws," started by asking the women how they were treated on set by their male counterparts. All agreed that, despite the burgeoning women's liberation movement, all were treated with respect and equality, for the most part.

For Backlinie, who played Chrissie, this was especially significant since she filmed her famous shark attack scene that opens the film in the nude. She said on other shoots, a nude scene usually brings lots of people to the set, but not on "Jaws."

"They cleared set for me very nicely," she said.

Backlinie also revealed that the man she was seeing at the time even went up to Peter Benchley, author of the book "Jaws," and asked him to leave, much to her embarrassment when she found out about it 30 years later at JawsFest 2005.

Murphy and her now-husband are island residents who were part of the crew on the "Jaws" shoot back in the spring and summer of 1974. They operated boats holding crew members and even helped tow the mechanical shark. She was surrounded by testosterone during the filming.

"A woman who was driving a boat was a bit of a novelty at the time," she said.

Fierro was another islander selected to be part of the movie. She had experience in acting and was cast to play Mrs. Kintner, whose son, Alex, is eaten by the shark. She recalled turning the role down when she found curse words had been added back into her lines. The problem was rectified, and Fierro spent seven days filming her scenes, including the famous slapping of the character Brody, played by actor Roy Scheider.

For Ramp, also an islander at the time, her appearance in the film was even shorter and being cast in it was actually accidental. After turning down the opportunity to be an extra in one of the street scenes, she started dating a man working on the film. She was on set during shooting and was approached to play the part of the girl who notices the shark entering a pond. Ramp said she would only do it if her artwork could be shown. Director Steven Spielberg agreed, and in the clothes she happened to be wearing, she stepped away from her easel set up in the sand to yell, "Shark!"

"The funny thing is the joke was on me," Ramp said, as the footage that included the art found its way to the editing room floor.

Blake's role in the making of "Jaws" was a little different than the other panelists. She was a writer for the Vineyard Gazette who wrote stories and took lots of photographs during film production. She compiled these into her 1975 book, "The Making of the Movie 'Jaws,'" with just three months of writing.

Blake said she turned down her husband's suggestion to make an outline of what she wanted to write about.

"I didn't need an outline. I had been through it," she said.

All the panelists agreed "Jaws" had changed their lives, whether it be in Fierro's case, who had people come up to her requesting to be slapped, or Backlinie, who suddenly had producers calling her into their offices just to meet her.

And 37 years after the film's original release, they're still as famous as ever.

"It was like no other job I'd ever had," Murphy said. "Nothing was impossible after 'Jaws.'"